Prospective Investigation of Risk Factors for Prostate Cancer in the UK Biobank Cohort Study

September 2017 in “ British Journal of Cancer ”

Aurora Perez-Cornago, Timothy J. Key, Naomi E. Allen, Georgina K. Fensom, Kathryn E. Bradbury, Richard M. Martin, Ruth C. Travis

Studysummary In this large British study, prostate cancer risk was linked to ethnicity, family history, prostate enlargement, and PSA testing, while excess adiposity, smoking, diabetes, and certain lifestyle factors were associated with a reduced risk. Our plain-language summary of this paper — not a Tressless recommendation.

The study, utilizing the UK Biobank cohort with 219,335 cancer-free men and identifying 4,575 prostate cancer cases over 5.6 years, found that black ethnicity, prior PSA testing, enlarged prostate, and family history of prostate cancer were associated with higher risk, while Asian ethnicity, obesity, smoking, diabetes, and lack of sexual activity or children were linked to lower risk. No significant associations were found with socioeconomic status, education, employment, marital status, height, physical activity, vasectomy, hypertension, and hair characteristics. The large sample size and range of risk factors, including body fat and sexual history, strengthen the study, despite limitations such as potential residual confounding and non-representative cohort. Future research is planned to assess risk factors by disease aggressiveness. The study was supported by Cancer Research UK, used the UK Biobank Resource, and reported no conflicts of interest.

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